Alumni in Action
Alumni Spotlight: Grayson Mack
What is your current job title?
Content Strategist for Google
Describe your current position.
At a high level, I own the content strategy across the support
ecosystems for Google Photos, Google Duo, and Android Messages. This
means that any time a user encounters an issue with one of my
products, such as wanting to learn more about a feature, troubleshoot
an issue, or get in contact with one of our support agents - I've
given them the tools and information they need to do it.
To what extent does writing relate to your current
position?/What type of writing/design do you do for work?
I use writing every day to do my job; mostly, I use it to write
project docs, proposals, team communications, and instructions for the
writing team to execute projects. I design a lot of experiments,
including defining the problem we’d like to solve, the experiment
acceptance criteria (how to set up the experiment), the goals of it,
and the next steps.
Briefly describe your path from graduation at GVSU to your
current position
For context, my title trajectory is as follows: Knowledge
Management Writer intern --> Technical Writer ---> Senior
Information Developer / UX Writer--- > Content Manager --->
Content Strategist.
Overall, how I've landed in this role is my ability to understand
a business (or product's) goals and user needs. Then,
I develop content strategies to help meet those goals while improving
the user experience. So, it's important to see the big picture of a
business strategy but balance those motivations with your end user
needs. Sometimes what a business needs at the moment is not the same
as what an end user needs. And the work I do is really about helping
the user succeed, and then showing the business how that helps them
meet their needs in quick, efficient, and scalable ways. Beyond that,
when I have the time, I look for work beyond my written job
description to see how else I can make impact for an organization,
group of people, product, etc.
And as an extra aside, I have worked in predominantly male
cross-functional teams. I've often been the only woman/person of color
in a meeting. I've learned how to advocate for myself, my ideas, and
my impact, and find others who will help advocate on behalf when I'm
not in the room. I think that's been a large part in how I've landed
in this position as well.
What parts of the writing major had the strongest impact on
you as a professional?
1) Understand how to translate classroom experience into
demonstrated skills/stories to put onto my resume or speak to
during interviews.
I believe that I approached and treated
school the same way I do with any full-time job. When you're working
on projects, attending class--put in the work and effort. And document
it! Save your projects, screenshot work, jot down notes about the
challenges of an assignment and how you overcame them. And I know that
sometimes life circumstances can take priority over this step, but
when you are able to, really commit.
2) Take relevant internships to anything related to
content/writing. And if you can't, use whatever job or internship
you have to stretch transferrable skills.
With a whole lot of privilege, a dash of skill and luck, my three
paying jobs my last two years of university were focused on writing. I
completed two editorial internships on campus and worked as a Writing
Consultant. Unpaid, but for the experience, I was a poetry editor
for fishladder. This was my entire résumé as I started
full-time job hunting. For those that can't have a similar graduating
résumé, I suggest using whatever work you have (including classroom
work) and focusing on growing your skillset in communication,
collaboration, documentation, leadership, inclusivity, problem
solving, etc. Those are the skills workplaces need, regardless if you
learned that through working in a restaurant or on a magazine.
3) Learn the workplace through studying job descriptions and titles.
This is pretty self-explanatory. I researched and studied the
field of work I was interested in and understood what those companies
were looking for. I aligned my experience and skills to those job
descriptions to illustrate that I could do the work.
What advice would you offer to current/future writing majors
at Grand Valley?
See question above and talk to people in the industries you're
interested in, if you can. Take them out to coffee and learn from
them, ask them thoughtful questions, tell them specifically where you
need advice and guidance.
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